


Eyes That Burn

by Butyoucancallmemeg



Series: Ascendants [1]
Category: Descendants (Disney Movies)
Genre: Isle of the Lost (Disney)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-29
Updated: 2019-05-29
Packaged: 2020-03-26 18:11:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19011145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Butyoucancallmemeg/pseuds/Butyoucancallmemeg
Summary: When Maleficent shortens her name to Mal, she tells her mother face-to-face, chin held high and hip cocked. She’s twelve years old.





	Eyes That Burn

**Author's Note:**

> This is set in the same 'verse as my fic Short Skirt/Long Jacket, but you don't have to read either to understand the other. The last timestamp is a mirror of the beginning of chapter three of that fic, but from Mal's perspective. I originally wrote the scene from Mal's perspective, but thought the fic needed more coherency.

Exiling every evildoer to a tiny island across the sea seems, to the untrained eye, the perfect solution to all of Auradon’s problems. King Adam makes the royal decree with Queen Belle at his side, and the Queen of the Fairies behind him. The alternative, he says, is execution, and by pardoning these treacherous villains so early in his reign, he secures his position as a benevolent and forgiving leader in the eyes of his people. They adore him. His reign is strong and lasting. Fairy Godmother, in her last act as Queen of the Fairies, spells a barrier between the Isle of the Lost and Auradon, before handing her rule to Belle. The barrier is strong, and it never wavers - functionally impenetrable. With no magic inside the barrier to counter it, the citizens of Auradon have no reason to fear. In fact, very little time passes before no one in Auradon thinks much of the Isle at all. 

The problem that lies with exiling all villains to a single island is that while they are, of course, trapped there with no means of escape, it is still an island full of villains with no one presiding over them. There is no infrastructure, no chain of command, no law. To put it plainly, the island is chaos. 

It’s only a quarter-century later, as a crown prince gazes at it from a castle window across the ocean, looking for something worth saving, that anyone thinks maybe it wasn’t such a great long-term plan. 

\--

Maleficent has never put much thought into the fact that her mother named her after herself. Fae don’t participate in the culture of surnames, so it was reasonable to assume that it was her mother finding a different way to ensure her legacy. And ensure it she did, training her daughter every day in the dark arts, though they had no magic with which to practice. Maleficent learned to read using spellbooks, learned to write in the flowing cursive of old potion manuals. Under her mother’s guiding hand, she learned the art of the lie; the elements of a good plot. Despite her smarts, Maleficent was a child built entirely in her mother’s image - callous, above all else. 

When Maleficent shortens her name to Mal, she tells her mother face-to-face, chin held high and hip cocked. She’s twelve years old. Her mother lets her eyes bleed green, when she finds out, the last dredges of her magic bubbling up to the surface. For the first time, Mal doesn’t relent, instead staring her down. She feels something within her chest expand, like taking a deep breath, but lower. It’s a muscle she’s never flexed before, but the sensation of fire licks up her spine, and she feels her eyes grow hot. Somehow, she can tell she has the same glowing irises that her mother has for so long used to strike fear in her. Maleficent throws up her hands with a scoff, and her eyes are suddenly back to normal. “Oh, sure!” she snipes, stepping around a bodyguard to invade Mal’s space. Mal flicks up her eyebrows, but says nothing. The snake-like flames have slithered back down her spine, curling heat in her stomach. Like a sense memory from a past life, Mal knows that this is what magic feels like. 

“Go on, feel free to  _ waste _ the reputation I’ve spent my life building for you!” Maleficent continues, her voice scornful, as if Mal is an imbecile for turning away such a gift. Mal, long used to the habits of her mother, meets this with a head tilt and a sardonic grin, before turning on her heel and leaving the tower. Maleficent doesn’t care enough to follow. Mal, as she strides down a narrow, dilapidated street, decides she doesn’t care enough to want her to. She swallows down the tightness in her throat, blinks away the pricking in her eyes. 

Living in the castle on the Isle of the Lost is something that Mal solely attributes to the power of their name. The grandeur of it was lost long before the Isle belonged to the villains, when a cannonball destroyed the entire front foyer, in a battle so unimportant that it was likely lost to the ages. After being dumped on the Isle, Maleficent quickly laid claim to the East Tower, and no one dared dispute her. The Evil Queen Grimhilde, seeing a window of opportunity, made her home in the West half. She, and now her daughter as well, benefits from the fear that the name “Maleficent” strikes in the hearts of all. Mal’s mother's reputation precedes them all. 

Mal decides she would rather build her own.

-

_ “I never get mad, it's wasteful. Feelings. Ugh. They’ll cloud your judgment and give you wrinkles - Never get mad, darling. Get even.” _

Mal is thirteen, and her mother has grown tired of teaching her lessons. Sometimes, she'll stop Mal on her way out the door to impart a tidbit of evil wisdom. Others, she waves a careless hand, tells Mal she needs to learn a little independence, and drags her out by the collar of her shirt, leaving her on her ass in the street. 

She knows by now that she's just one of Maleficent's less well-thought-out plots. Wanting a legacy to impart wisdom on, Maleficent never considered the upkeep of a child. The constance.

_ "Dammit, you're insufferable. Why do people have children? Go outside! I don't want to see you or hear you for at least twenty-four hours."  _

It's ten at night, but Mal has learned by now not to ask questions. She leaves the castle quickly, head down, shoulders hunched, headed for her bolt hole - a collapsed tenement behind the island’s main marketplace was abandoned rather than rebuilt, because there were rumors that Ursula had ordered a hit on it. Mal couldn't care less why, really, because it means she can set up a mattress and blanket without worry that it'll be pillaged by the next time she needs it. Tonight, she takes a spray can to one of the walls, and lets herself get lightheaded from the fumes.

-

A tall, broad boy brushes past Mal in the street, slamming their shoulders hard enough to bruise. She's fourteen, and in her mind she hears her mother's voice as she bends down to pick up a stone from the ground.

_ “Don't get angry when you can get even _ ." 

Mal turns on her heel, lobbing the rock hard at the back of the boy’s head. Anger is something that Mal never has any trouble letting go of. It flows like water through her, only present long enough for her to spare it a passing thought before it’s gone again, and she’s calm and focused. 

Spite and vengefulness, on the other hand, are completely separate entities from anger. They aren’t feelings - Mal likes to think she doesn’t have any of those pesky things. Affection and sorrow and anger all seem like a lot of work, to her.

Which is why when he whips his head around, long hair flying, to glare at her, she feels a rush of petty satisfaction. It's just a little turnabout - a bruise for a bruise.

"Bitch." she says, deliberately enunciating. She’s already got his attention - might as well hold onto it. 

His look of confusion morphs, eyebrows drawing down in anger, and she gives him a sneering kind of smirk - the kind she practices in the mirror in her bedroom, the kind that says “I’m toying with you, and I’m enjoying it”  - before turning and sauntering in the direction she had been traveling already. When she rounds a corner, Mal stops and presses her back tight against the alley wall. It’s mid-afternoon, but there’s enough shadow cast by the building for Mal to grab onto, the warmth of magic snaking up her spine, into the forefront of her mind as she imagines the light shying away from her, the dark wrapping around her like a blanket. 

When the boy comes into view, he rushes past, skidding to a halt to peer down the narrow alley, then turning to look back behind him. When he takes his hat off, running a hand through his hair in frustration, something glints in the red folds of it. Mal leans forward, straining to see what he's hiding.

"Yo, Jay!" someone calls out, both out of sight and breathless. The mere sound of it seems to make the long-haired boy forget his anger momentarily. The tension bleeds out of his shoulders as he turns around, his face going softer at the edges. A small boy with white hair slows to a stop in front of the first. He's gangly and thin. Sundry scars litter the visible parts of his arms and legs, past the hems of his too-big clothes. 

"Carlos," Jay greets, sounding relieved. He steps into the small boy’s space thoughtlessly, and neither seems to pay any mind to the fact that they’re nearly chest-to-chest. Or, what would be, if not for their height disparity.

"Get anything?" 

Carlos has to step back to empty his pockets. A few bracelets and watches glint in the light as he displays them in his palms, then stows them again. When he hold his arm up, Mal can see round, silvery burns on his forearms. Jay opens his hat so Carlos can see inside. Mal rises up on her toes to see into it, but Jay tugs it quickly back over his hair. 

“Gaston’s latest bitch pulled through again,” Jay says with a smirk, pulling a large, hideous brooch from the waistband of his pants, and a gaudy necklace from inside his vest. 

“Easy money,” Carlos grins. “Anything from the purple chick?”

Jay’s hand slides into the shoulder of his vest and comes out with a handful of coins, smirking. Mal checks her pockets, finding them empty. 

Clever boy.

Mal couldn't fault the kid his technique - she never even felt his lift as he passed by.

“Good, ‘cause she’s long gone by now,” Carlos grins, landing a light, playful punch on the other boy’s arm. From where Mal's standing, that seems like a stupid idea. It's very much a "brains and brawn" situation these two boys have put themselves in - Mal wonders if the little one, Carlos, is blackmailing Jay with anything, or if Jay is just using Carlos out of convenience.

Jay steps closer, sliding Mal’s coins into a pocket. “Go fuck yourself,” he growls. Mal can't see his face clearly, but he sounds menacing. Carlos is smaller than Jay, scrawny and malnourished and most definitely younger. Carlos has to tilt his head up to see Jay’s face from their proximity. He doesn’t seem scared. Maybe he has a trick up his sleeve. Mal leans forward, hoping to catch a brawl, maybe even score some loot in the chaos. Instead, Carlos rises up on his toes to lock their lips together.

Jay reciprocates immediately, lowering his head to deepen the kiss and orienting his body around Carlos like this is something thoughtless, something irresistible. Carlos’s hands grip the leather of Jay’s vest as Jay licks into his mouth, dirty and rough. 

Mal stares. Homosexuality isn't uncommon on the isle, nor is sex in general, but something about it still takes her off-guard. Her surprise splits her focus, and she notices her control slipping a moment too late, feels the snap of the shadows falling back into place like a hot white flash through her whole body. Her magic is nothing nearly as strong as it could be outside the barrier - only strong enough for parlor tricks and quick escapes. She's still testing its limits.

"Fuck!" she exclaims, all eloquence as she stumbles out into the slanted afternoon sunlight.

Jay shoves Carlos bodily away from him before he even seems to register a threat, already turning to advance on Mal as Carlos hits the ground, hard. When he sees her shock of purple hair, he stops. 

"You." he snaps. Now Jay doesn’t only look angry, he looks furious. His body is rigid, coiled, ready for a fight, but there’s something in his eyes. Mal draws herself up to her full height - she’s a meager five feet flat, but her poisonous green eyes flash greener as she folds her arms over her chest. Jay doesn't flinch or back down, but he doesn't move any closer either.

"That's a nice little arrangement you've got there," she notes, with an approving nod. Carlos, on the ground, stands up without taking his eyes off her, a calculating scowl on his face. 

"Tag teaming marks - divvying up the goods so if one of you gets caught, the other gets away," Mal continues, pretending not to notice the way Jay rocks back to put his weight on his heels, briefly mollified. She leans to peer past Jay, addressing the boy on the ground directly.

"It's clever. I might even be jealous."

Carlos stands, brushing himself off. "It does the job," he acknowledges. It's neither an acceptance nor a dismissal of praise. Mal files that away. She saunters forwards - toward Jay, to show she's not intimidated by his size - casts an exaggerated glance between them and says with a laugh, "You know, I've gotta ask - which one of you is the Prince Charming?"

Jay growls. Carlos sets his jaw. 

"Uh-oh. Have I touched a nerve?" She pouts her lower lip out, and enjoys the way their anger simmers visibly "Oh, no."  

“If you’ve got something to say, fucking say it.” It’s Carlos who speaks, with steely determination, hands clenching into fists at his sides. Jay’s head makes an aborted twist in his direction. Interesting. 

“You’re a little small to be such a spitfire,” Mal observes. Carlos doesn't say anything, just tilts his chin up and holds eye contact. Mal likes these two, she decides. she uncrosses her arms and lets her hands hang open at her sides.

"Look," she sighs, "I'll give it to you straight - " Mal lets the pun hang for a second just to see the way they react, and is not disappointed when Jay flinches. "- You steal my shit without me noticing, you earned it. We're even. Do that shit again, though, and I won't just stand around and look threatening. Cool?" 

Startled, Jay glances over at Carlos, who just looks puzzled. “Who  _ are _ you?”

"Name's Mal." She replies, sticking out a hand. She's never shaken someone's hand before, but she's seen other people do it, and it feels like the right thing to do. It's the kind of greeting that happens between equals, she thinks. Carlos hesitates, eyes her and her hand mistrustfully, but Mal doesn't dare rescind it now that she's put it out. Slowly, Carlos reaches out. He grasps her hand. Gives it a single, firm shake. 

Without another word, she swings around the corner, back into the street. Her hands go in her pockets. She doesn't look back.

-

It’s interesting, Mal thinks, how the first time any of them come in direct contact with anyone from Auradon is only as the car is pulling up in front of East Tower to take them away. When they’re first invited to the mainland for schooling, it’s with thick creamy paper invitations that smell deliciously of magic and have their names embossed on them. None of them have ever been to school before, and only have the faintest idea of what that means. There aren’t any schools on the island.

Immediately after reading it, Mal wonders if she can burn it, pretend she never got it and move on with her life as usual. It gives a little zing of magic when she opens it, and in the pit of her stomach - the same place that coil of magic always comes from - she knows there won’t be any pretending about it. Later, Jay and Carlos meet her at the collapsed tenement behind the marketplace that’s now more clubhouse than bolt-hole, each with the same official-looking cards as she received. 

Initially, they decide not to go. 

“Fuck they think’s gonna happen, huh?” Carlos asks, voice bitter and cold, when they meet up again later. He’s holding the card in a fist, wrinkling the paper. “Four villains move to Auradon, get schooled, and what? We become good, functioning members of their little society?” 

“Four?” Mal repeats, brows raised, “Who’s the fourth?” 

She hates not knowing things. More unknowns means more risk, and there are already far too many unknowns for comfort. 

Jay hesitates, and in that beat of silence Mal resigns herself to the fact she won’t be liking the answer.

“Evie Grim.” He says, “I told her to meet us here.”

Whether it’s Evie herself that he thought she’d be mad at, or the fact that she’s meeting them in the clubhouse, Mal’s not sure. Either way, she rounds on him, eyes bleeding green despite herself. 

“You invited her  _ here _ ?” she demands, “She knows where we  _ sleep _ ?”

Evie and Jay know each other - for a value of knowing each other that, from what she can gather, involves stealing the same necklace back and forth from each other and talking like porn stars for no reason. 

Carlos doesn’t seem to mind it, so they must not be fucking. Mal doubts the idea would even occur to Jay, but Evie’s another matter altogether: well on her way to being a Black Widow the likes of which even the Isle has never seen. 

“She’s trouble, Jay,” Mal says, “And not the fun kind.” 

Jay opens his mouth, maybe to argue, but it’s Carlos who pipes up first. 

“She’s smart, Mal. Good at what she does. We don’t know what we’d be walking into, and if we do it, she’ll be an asset.”

Jay nods along his agreement, “She runs the best confidence game I’ve ever seen.” 

Mal cocks her head. 

She knows all this, on some level. Evie Grim just leaves a bad taste in her mouth. Bad tastes don’t determine contingencies, though, so she just tilts her head and says, “Doesn’t mean I want her to know where I sleep.” 

Then, like she was waiting in the fucking wings, Evie swans into the room.

“I see my reputation precedes me,” she lilts, shoulders back and head held high. Jay grins at her, and she gives him a secretive little smile before leveling Mal with a look that’s part smug, part easy confidence. 

Her reputation didn’t need to precede her, but nobody else needed to know that. 

Now, Mal knows how to shut feelings down. They’re helpful to recognize, but they cloud her judgment, so she does what she can to dispose of them quickly. So Mal lifts her chin, crosses her arms, gazes back with eyes still poison green, and pushes hard against whatever feeling is bubbling up inside her. 

She doesn’t like it one bit. 

The mural is the only identifying feature of the place, and Mal tenses as Evie approaches it curiously. It’s always been a risk to have it, but part of her can’t bear the idea of covering it up. It covers one full wall, but the edges have spilled over onto the adjacent ones as she’s built it out. Her first pass at the thing wasn’t nearly as big, but the purple, green and black motif of the center fade out to incorporate reds, whites, and a smattering of gold. 

It’s a work in progress - abstract depictions of each of them, cut over and behind by nonsensical swirls and lines of color. If she tries, she can chart the history of her worst moments in every stretch of paint-covered concrete. Her skin itches to have a stranger looking at it.

Carlos went missing for a week. She painted more than she slept. A flash of white and red and black tears across the wall with hard cell-shaded lines blurred out by speed. His body can hardly be made out, but he’s running, head turned to look behind him, grinning fearlessly. He came back with a broken arm, yellowing black eyes, and a concave stomach. That day was the only time she ever ventured to the barges. 

The only time Jay ever got caught, it was by the forty thieves. They broke five ribs, his wrist, and most of the bones in his hand. The bruises on his stomach and chest took up more space than his skin. When Carlos dragged him inside, fear was etched into every line of him. It’s no secret that theft is the only thing Jafar keeps him around for (the only thing Jay thinks he’s good for). Carlos set the bones with shaking hands and an anatomy manual. Mal had never tried to heal anything with magic before, but she pushed and pushed until she threw up from the force of it. Jay lay comatose for two days, and she painted him in warm golden tones, red hat hanging loose from deft fingers, black hair flowing out behind him as he stands watching Carlos run. When he woke up he said, “you should see the other guys,” and Mal had left before she had to see Carlos cry. 

Neither of those hold Evie’s attention for as long as she stands looking at the eyes.

Green eyes stare out from the center of the wall, haloed in purple without a single horn in sight. It’s not a self-portrait in the traditional sense, but there’s an echo of a smirk in the smoky background, the outline of what might be hair. She’d done that her first night here, added the details at her own whim as the years went on. Her logo is scrawled underneath, rough and angry. Evie runs a gentle finger over it. 

“Don’t,” Mal says sharply. She gets a little rush of satisfaction when the girl startles, hand drawing back like it’s been burned. 

“Don’t ever think you’re not replaceable, you ungrateful little twerp,” her mother had snarled, black cloak swirling around her as she rounded on Mal. She almost seemed to be growing larger as she spoke, her body disappearing into the black folds. “I’ll cut your tongue out and watch you starve before I ever let you betray me. I cursed a thousand men much braver than you, kiddo, and just because I didn’t get my hands dirty then doesn’t mean I won’t now.” In one hand, she brandished her scepter. In the other, a shining silver dagger. When Mal didn’t cower - just stood and watched, expression blank - she threw it, shouting in wordless rage. Mal didn’t flinch, even as it carved a thin line in the spot where her neck meets her shoulder. A few individual purple hairs fell to the ground as it flew past. The blade lodged itself into the wall.

She can’t remember now what it was that made her mother so angry - for all that Maleficent claimed not to get angry, it wasn’t exactly an infrequent tableau. The important bit came as she was standing, wordless, watching her mother threaten and rant and rage, and carefully considered stabbing her in the heart.

The knife was behind her, and Maleficent didn’t appear to have any other weapons. There wasn’t anything in arm’s reach to defend herself with, and Mal was immune to her mother’s eyes. She didn’t even think she’d feel particularly bad about it - she could bring Jay and Carlos up to the East Tower. She’d easily inherit her mother’s cohort of bodyguards. Killing Maleficent on its own would be enough to ensure no one would ever bother any of them again. She’d wrenched the blade from the wall, tested its weight in her hands, and left the castle without looking back.

Somewhere on the walk, her shaking hands had turned to fists. Her anger and fear and quiet, barely-acknowledged horror at herself had turned into something more like steely resolve. She was evil. She was rotten. There was no turning back. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> As always, catch me on tumblr at lesbionicteenagewarhead.tumblr.com


End file.
